1
The Invalids Story

• By Mark Twain

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Setting

• Time late 1800s 1 night
• Place Ohio to Wisconsin by train
• P.D. winter, warm, smelly train car

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Plot

• The narrator receives word his friend has passed
  he must accompany his body back home to his
  parents.
• At the train station, there is a mix-up.
  Unbeknownst to the narrator, he has a box of guns
  rather than his friends body.
• Someone places a box of Limburger cheese in the
  train car and it begins to smell. The narrator
  and the expressman think its the body.
• Both men try to move the box, step outside the
  car, break a window, smoke cigars, sprinkle
  carbolic acid and burn fragrant materials
  nothing works.
• Three weeks later, after a bout of illness, the
  narrator learns the truth about the rifles and
  cheese.

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Characterization

• Narrator 41, bachelor, accompanies his friends
  body in a train car. He mistakes a box of guns
  for the body and the odor of Limburger cheese for
  the body decomposing. Two years later, he
  humorously relates the story using exaggeration.
• Thompson 50s, jolly, comical man. Riding in a
  train car with the narrator, also mistakes the
  odor of the cheese for the decomposing body.
  Finds humorous ways to describe the narrators
  friend and helps the narrator try to cover the
  smell.

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Conflict

• Man vs. AF
• Narrator vs. the odor
• The narrator and Thompson vs stifling heat and
  the odor of the train car caused by a mix-up in
  boxes and a piece of Limburger
• The men are driven out into the cold and become
  sick. Three weeks later, they find out about the
  mix up. Two years later, the narrator recounts
  the event.

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Theme

• Things are not always what they seem
• Your imagination can run away with you

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Literary Elements Techniques

• Point of View first person participant
• Humor
• Sometimes created through exaggeration.
• Grisly humor this refers to topics which arent
  usually considered funny.
• I seem sixty and married, but these effects are
  due to my condition and sufferings, for I am a
  bachelor, and only 41.
• Hes pretty ripe, aint he?
• Flashback the story is told in retrospect
• Situational Irony Three weeks after the entire
  ordeal which changed his life dramatically, the
  narrator finds out he had been transporting guns
  rather than a body and the smell was Limburger
  cheese.